Gallery 4Culture

new voices, new visions, new work

Julie Alpert

Funded by a 2012 Pollock Krasner Award, Julie Alpert spent the year developing a personalized language of pattern, primary to her investigation of illusion, color and material relationships along with the visual tension between subject and environment.

Tableau Vivant is a dramatic installation of hand painted wood cutouts, reminiscent of a theatrical set that playfully intersects the gallery space. Covered with vinyl, fragments of artist designed fabric and paint, the dimensional forms present a vibrant cacophony of pattern that switches between flatness and dimensionality. Interested in the depiction of space through flatness, Alpert aims to make the private contained experience of viewing painting more physical and to activate the space in which it sits.

Less dominant, but key to understanding the artist’s process in discovering the power of pattern, is a wall of small watercolor studies. Ghost images of furniture become negative shapes defined by the patterning around them. Interior domestic scenes are repeated in multiple versions.

Ms. Alpert’s interest in pattern derives from fashion, nature, and interior design from the 60s and 70s. Her artistic influences include film and theater as well as the artists Jessica Stockholder, Amy Yoes, and Ludovica Gioscia. Julie Alpert: Tableau Vivant runs in conjunction with the Seattle Art Museum’s exhibition, Elles: Women Artists of the Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Washington, DC native Julie Alpert has a BA in painting from the University of Maryland and an MFA in painting from the University of Washington. She is the recipient of a 2012 Pollock-Krasner Award as well as two GAP grants (2012, 2009). Julie has been a member of SOIL Gallery since 2009. When not making installations she performs as a dancing taco in the Seattle art band The Bran Flakes, most recently at the Tacoma Art Museum and ONN/OF Festival. Julie teaches teens at Gage Academy of Art, will be teaching 2013 summer courses at Cornish College of the Arts, and gives private drawing lessons. She lives in South Seattle with her husband and 18 pound cat.